👾 Can you smell the pixels?

This week we’re talking about playing 🕹️ Super Mario Bros. in Central Park, an AR iOS app for real-time measuring, smelling with VR 👃, and one state down (Florida), 46 to go for legalizing robot delivery.  

AR . 

It’s Me, Mario, in Central Park 🌲
Abhishek Singh is our hero. This past week, the developer released a video of himself playing Super Mario Bros. in Central Park. Oh, the most important part… he played it in augmented reality! Step aside, Pokemon Go. The video shows Singh dressed up as Mario, going through the first level, jumping over level gaps, unlocking coins and mushrooms. Considering how smooth the gameplay is, it’s impressive to hear there wasn’t any post-production editing involved.
It seems Singh portrayed the first level to a T, he was able to also jump on Goombas, kick Koopa Troopa shells, and even grab a Fire Flower and turn into Fire Mario. It’s pretty incredible to see all the different ways Super Mario Bros. has been imagined on different devices. But so far, this has to top them all. At the moment the game isn’t publically available, but let’s hope that Nintendo has something in the works.

More AR .

AR rulers rule, real rulers…👎
This app isn’t out yet, but it will be this coming fall when iOS 11 launches. Laan Labs will be releasing AR Measure, an app that allows you to measure objects with your iPhone. This is great for a variety of reasons. First, what if you don’t own a tape measure in the first place? Second, ok you have one, but where did you put it? And third, it really shows how AR can be a practical tool and not just a game. Though, there is nothing wrong with all the cool AR games coming out (see above).
For their demo video, released this week, they show a virtual ruler right alongside a real one. It’s accurate, and the technology supporting it is surprisingly complex. Laan Labs gives credit to ARKit, Apple’s platform for developing augmented reality software. AR apps generally use not just camera input, but also coma pass, accelerometer,and gyroscope information to determine exactly how a phone is positioned to ultimately simulate pixels on top of reality in real-time.

VR .

Adding smell to VR, it’s here 👃👾
VR has been playing some tricks on your brain with some insanely convincing visual stimuli. So why not add smell to the mix? VAQSO VR is a VR attachment to headsets that adds smell to the experience. The built in cartridges pack a punch and directly tie to real-time VR experiences. If you walk into a virtual room with coffee, the smell of coffee gets stronger as you walk closer to the source.
Smell merged with VR actually isn’t a new phenomenon. FealReal has been around for a few years now. But, when FealReal came out it almost covered your entire face, like a motorcycle helmet. It was a lot to put on your head, and put your neck to the test. The VAQSO is pretty clever as it should be able to be added to the many different VR headsets that are coming out. The real story is probably all the hilarious QA testing involved in making the smells work correctly. 😤

LEGAL .

Robot delivery is gaining ground, legally
We’ve written quite a bit about drone delivery, robot delivery, and other cool delivery technology advancements here and there. But, what about the legality of it all? This past week, Florida became the fourth state to allow robot delivery on sidewalks. One company, Starship Technologies, has been a major force behind bringing this legislation forward. Florida is joining Virginia, Wisconsin and Idaho.
A major focus be hasen reconciling the convenience and efficiency of robot delivery with public safety. For example, one major condition within the legal approval was that the autonomous robots could be taken over manually if necessary. Other conditions were limits on weight (80 pounds max), and speed (not more than 10 miles an hour). Naturally, the thought here is, the slower and lighter it is the less damage it can do. Ah, just looking forward to a Snickers bar on demand, and all the other inevitable guilt-free deliveries bound to happen.
As always, check out our blog for more. That’s it for this week.✌️

🇨🇦 A.I. just beat your Ms. Pac-man score 🤷

This week we’re talking about Switzerland with a top 3 global supercomputer ranking, blockchain for refugees, A.I. that can beat Ms. Pac-man, and A.I., again, in competition between Airbnb and hotels.  

COMPUTING . 

U.S. no longer in top 3, welcome Switzerland 🇨🇭
The Swiss have some impressive new supercomputing technology, specifically the Piz Daint supercomputer. It’s now kicked the U.S. out of the world’s top 3 supercomputers. 😟 There’s an official list that tracks global supercomputer ranking, called the TOP500, that came out with a new report this June.
You probably guessed the other top 2 supercomputers are Chinese. The United States’ best supercomputer is the Titan, based at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. While the Titan is capable of 17.6 petaflops, the Swiss supercomputer is able to do 19.6. To put that in perspective, the Chinese computing speed is far, far ahead at 34 petaflops and 93 petaflops for their Tianhe-2 and Taihulight supercomputers. Silver lining? The U.S. still holds five of the 10 ‘best’ supercomputers in the world.

BLOCKCHAIN .

For a smart refugee registration system?
Accenture and Microsoft have developed a prototype for providing legal IDs to more than 1.1 billion people around the world by 2020. Of those 1.1 billion, the 7 million global refugees may be those that benefit most. Legal IDs help refugees cross borders, qualify for aid, and get access to many other basic services. The technology involves combining a person’s biometric information, such as fingerprint or retina scan, with blockchain to create a legal identity.
The goal is to cover 1.1 billion people, because, shockingly, that is the number of people that “cannot participate in cultural, political, economic, and social life because they lack the most basic information: Documented proof of their existence.” That is roughly one-sixth of the world’s population. The prototype is part of promoting the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goal to provide legal IDs to everyone.

A.I. .

Canadian A.I. unbeatable by Ms. Pac-Man 🕹️
Maluuba is a Canadian A.I. firm that was acquired by Microsoft earlier this year. So this is partially a 🇨🇦/🇺🇸 A.I. that recently attained a max score on Ms. Pac-Man. The human record at 266,330, kind of pales in comparison to the max score possible, at 999,990.
Maluuba wasn’t the only AI firm attempting to create an unbeatable player at Ms. Pac-Man. It might be surprising that many, many other firms and teams have attempted this same Ms. Pac-Man challenge and failed. This leaves the AI community recognizing Microsoft & Maluuba’s unbeatable AI system as a real achievement. Applying AI to beat games has been an ongoing proxy for measuring the development of the technology. Games ranging from Jeopardy, Chess, and even Go are no longer out of reach.

A.I. .

How Airbnb uses A.I. to compete with hotels 🛏️
Airbnb has invested a lot of money in data science and machine learning. And it’s paying off. Why and how? They want to improve the conversion rates on their site, from people looking at listings to actually making a booking. Their VP of engineering shared that their application of a deep neural net to their search-ranking system has led to better search results.
Their goal is to provide personalization at scale. These search results can now better reflect your personal preferences, outdoorsy vs. urban, downtown bar scene or a quiet family neighborhood. The types of words you put into those search results directly tied to hundreds (!) of factors related to the listing shown to you. The impact? Their conversion rate increased by 1 percent. 😲  Powerful stuff.
As always, check out our blog for more. That’s it for this week.✌️

From self-driving cars to self-flying planes? 🤖✈️

This week we’re talking about innovative air taxis, a CityTree🌲 that’s more than a tree, smart beacons helping the visually impaired, Boeing’s dream for self-flying planes ✈️

TRANSPORTATION . 

Air taxis, for real, and… safer? 🚕  🚁
We know you’re anxiously following the latest developments in the burgeoning air taxi industry, yes, like the flying vehicles out of Blade Runner or the Jetsons. So, we have to share a new air taxi from a company in Ohio. Surefly, is a part-electric, part-gasoline powered air-taxi from a company called Workhorse. What’s impressive about their new air-taxi is that having two sources of power is likely to reduce consumer anxiety of… running out of power. It is also designed with eight counter-rotating blades on the sides of the structure, instead of on top.
This means that, in the worst, worst case scenario, you can casually release their ‘ballistic parachute’ up into the air without the blades shredding it apart. They will be doing a demo flight later this year. A dozen other companies from Zee Aero, backed by Larry Page, to Toyota, Uber (Uber Elevate) and Aeromobile will be watching Workhorse closely. Though the technology may be right around the corner, some major regulatory battles will need to be fought. I’m sure they can take pages out of Uber and Airbnb’s playbooks.

ENVIRONMENT .

Smart nature cleaning up our cities air
According to the World Health Organization, the largest single environmental health risk is air pollution. It causes seven million premature deaths a year. We’ve heard of urban dwellers in China needing to check the air quality before leaving their homes and needing to wear air masks. So let’s talk solutions. Last week’s newsletter mentioned air purifiers the size of buildings that capture carbon dioxide. But what about something more natural, like trees?
When it comes to environmental benefits, trees do more than emit oxygen. They also absorb carbon dioxide and even absorb harmful gasses such as carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide. A new mobile installation called ‘CityTree’ takes this principle and instead uses moss cultures. The installation is only 4 meters tall and 3 meters wide, but it has the same environmental benefit of 275 trees. CityTree is sprouting up in Brussels, Hong Kong, Paris, and Oslo. And an obvious added benefit, an additional patch of green within a concrete jungle always looks really nice. 🌲🌆

ACCESSIBILITY .

Tech that helps everyone get from A to B 🔊
Heads up, this is going to be a very transportation-focused newsletter. This bit is focusing on where the latest technology is being applied to make transportation more accessible to the disabled. One example is Wayfindr, which uses audio technology to help those with vision impairment navigate train stations. There are around 285 million people worldwide with sight loss. In the UK alone, nearly half of those with sight loss say they would like to leave their home more often.
Wayfindr looks at smartphones as the key. The non-profit partners with city transportation systems to install Beacons. The Beacons use Bluetooth to determine the location of a user and then provide spoken instructions to tell the user their distance from a staircase, where trains are located, or when they are approaching the end of an escalator. Another interesting app is the UberWAV app, which is essentially Uber with specially-outfitted cars for wheelchair users. Pretty awesome to see examples of technology applied towards improving everyone’s lives.

AUTOMATION .

This is your Robot Captain speaking…
One of the biggest aviation events is next week, the Paris Air Show, and so a lot of companies are making grand announcements. Boeing announced that it will be looking into autonomous flying. Where is the technology currently? Already, the autopilot system handles takeoff, cruise, and landing. At the moment pilots are required for rough flying conditions or to make different heading adjustments.
Pure automation still looks to be pretty far on the horizon, as the autonomous flight system would need to be able to account for all sorts of random externalities. Though even as a long-term play, the aviation market is expected to continue to grow rapidly and drive this type of innovation forward. A sign of the current confidence in the autopilot system – Asian airlines prohibit pilots from taking control of the planes in certain situations. Now that’s interesting! 🤖👨‍✈️✈️
As always, check out our blog for more. That’s it for this week.✌️

Mmmm it tastes so watery 🚰

This week we’re talking about AI autism detection early and accurately, 🇨🇭 Swiss building-sized air purifiers, there may be a sixth taste 👅?, and VR for drug rehabilition.

MEDICAL . 

AI Detects Autism in Infants Before Humans
Our last newsletter mentioned how the FDA is hiring computer and data scientists like crazy to keep track of the impact that AI is having on medical software. Latest research from the University of North Carolina provides more evidence that AI already is revolutionizing health and medical science. A research group at the University of North Carolina were able to predict with near complete accuracy whether a baby would develop autism at six-months. Currently, a child isn’t diagnosed by a professional with autism until they are over two years old.
While the earliest signs do emerge at around 6-12 months most diagnoses are not considered definitive until 18 months. That means machine learning may have now provided a new highly accurate and early diagnostic test for autism. Their algorithm was able to detect patterns in brain scan signatures, by focusing on brain regions associated with key features of autism, such as language skills and repetitive behaviors. Data ftw! 💪

ENVIRONMENT .

Converting CO2 into $$$ 💰
Who knew that fighting climate change can be part of a competitive economy? Well, almost everyone. Especially the Swiss. Last week, the world was graced with the first commercial plant that captures carbon dioxide from the air and sells it to business. It can capture the approximate output of 200 cars annually, at 900 tons of CO2.
The company, Climeworks, is aiming to capture 1% of the world’s CO2 emissions and eyes 250,000 plants to attain that goal. The gas is currently sent through an underground pipeline to a greenhouse to help grow vegetables. But the gas could also be sold to carbonated beverages. While there are over a billion cars in the world, and there are more efficient methods out there, this is still a significant step. They’re profiting off of the air, and helping the environment! It’s a win-win.

💧 .

Do we have a sixth sense on our tongue?
Yeah, bet you’re surprised we didn’t start the newsletter with this one. Scientists believe they have discovered a sixth sense – or taste – on the tongue. The additional taste, along with the five basic tastes (salty, sour, sweet, bitter, and umami), could be water. Does water have a taste of its own? Or is it really just a conduit for other tastes? Either way, some hipster is going to make ‘watery’ food a dining trend by the end of the year.
Scientists at the California Institute of Technology found water-sensing taste receptor cells (TRCs) in the mouse tongue. They then found that mice that didn’t have these TRC’s had a more difficult time deciding to drink water versus a less palatable clear oil. Even further testing their case, in a separate batch of specially bred mice, scientists were able to manipulate the mice’s TRCs to react to blue light. Shining blue light on these mice’s tongues led the mice to act as if they were tasting the water. How? The mice started to lick a water spout, without any water present! Let’s see Evian and Dasani have a field day with this…

VR .

It’s not all fun and games, it’s therapy ⚕️
We’ve talked about VR for baseball, and you may have heard that a recent record was set for being plugged into VR the longest amount of time (50 hours), but VR is serious business. Or it could be. A Canadian long-term drug addiction treatment center is looking at VR for treatment. One thing addiction experts know is that people with addictions have ‘triggers’ that lead them to relapse into past behavior. The idea here is to help clients exercise self-control when exposed to these triggers in a virtual environment.
The treatment center, John Volken Academy, is working with a professor at Canada’s Simon Fraser University. Now that the quality of VR is getting better and better, the question is whether the experience will be real enough to elicit the same real-world responses. So far the project is very early on, but the research will continue for the next five years in Canada, and eyes to expand to treatment centers in the United States as well.
As always, check out our blog for more. That’s it for this week.✌️

We’re all (inter)connected, even your house plants 🤖🌱

This week we’re talking about Walmart blockchain drone technology 😲, the FDA playing catch up with artificial intelligence, new IoT for watering your plants, and a twist on robot delivery ⚡.

DRONES + BLOCKCHAIN . 

Like PB+J? Walmart looking to mix and match
In past newsletters we’ve discussed how blockchain technology can be applied to more than just cryptocurrency. It has implications in areas ranging from land ownership to the supply chain of sustainably sourced food. Walmart has added to this blockchain-eating-the-world phenomenon, by filing a patent this past week that mixes blockchain with drone delivery.
The patent application, generically titled “Unmanned Aerial Delivery to Secure Location,” involves drones delivering items to lockers. The drones would communicate with these lockers, remotely unlocking and opening them, for drop-off inside. Walmart would incorporate blockchain within this communication, both in the tracking the physical items, and adding an additional level of security. Amazon surpassed Walmart’s market cap in mid-2015, so it looks like these big moves are all about staying relevant.

HEALTH .

FDA preparing for A.I.’s impact on health software 🏥
There’s been a wave of health apps and wearables entering the market. There are apps that use image-recognition to suggest whether we have a type of skin cancer, and apps that help you self-diagnose mental illness. Surprisingly, the FDA doesn’t regulate most of these apps, only if they are deemed to pose a ‘high risk’ to the public. The thing is, nothing looks to shake up the software world more than the application of AI.
In this light, innovation is great and all, but the FDA wants safe innovation. This week’s development is that the FDA is building out a team of computer scientists to specifically address how Artificial Intelligence will impact medical software. While many health apps and devices may be deemed ‘low risk’ by the FDA, adding an AI component may be a whole other ball game. This may be great timing by the FDA, as the rumor mill says the upcoming iPhone 8 could have its own AI chip.

IoT .

Now you can link up your potted plants 🤖🌱
We already have acres and acres of interconnected agricultural infrastructure, ‘smart farming’, that is feeding millions of people. What’s next? A new kickstarter wants us to think smaller. Launched last week, Grovio is an IoT solution for your potted plants. Grovio is a smart watering device app paired with a mobile app. The cool part is you can water your plant remotely via the mobile app for up to 45 days.
There have been mixed responses so far. The point of having house plants is to improve the ambiance of your home, and now we have another device sitting around, this one with tubes stretching into your plants? It also is nearly identical to the Amazon Echo in shape and size. How many of these smart assistance robots can you fit on your table, doing things for you, before someone thinks you can’t do simple tasks for yourself?

DELIVERY .

Zoom, zoom, European robot deliveries getting competitive
Where Walmart wants to do autonomous drone delivery, several European startups are looking at autonomous vehicle delivery. Startups Teleretail (🇨🇭) and Starship (🇬🇧 +🇪🇪) have vehicles the size of baby carriages, to ferry your precious cargo from point A to B. Teleretail recently debuted their latest version, and it is ready to be used in suburban and rural deliveries. Not only would it be used for dropping off packages to customers, but also pick up items as well.
Other autonomous delivery startups have designed their robots to travel on city sidewalks and crosswalks, Teleretail and Starship are different in that their robots can go longer distances and operate on the road. Teleretail will be launching its pilot in the U.S. and Switzerland soon and their target customer is small business owners. They want to help brick and mortar stores stay competitive with ecommerce by offering cheaper delivery options. It also would have a better ecological footprint.

 
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